On the Right to Move

My son is studying Ancient Greece; we are homeschooling, which means I get to read some things right along with him. An essay by Edith Hamilton claims that the concept of human freedom and human rights emerged in Greece. A bit debatable, but a common and defensible claim. It immediately occurred to me—though Hamilton not say it—that the reason it arose in Greece and not in Egypt, Persia, China, the Indus, or elsewhere was that the ancient Greeks were, uniquely, organized into small city states, and were mobile sea traders. I grasp what this means in a visceral way, because I have experienced the life of city states in the Persian/Arabian Gulf.

When you have a collection of small states, all close by and all sharing the same language and culture, with a mobile population, you automatically have both freedom and democracy. There is no way to avoid it. This is because, if a government becomes oppressive, each citizen has the simple option of moving to the next city.

That's a pretty strong guarantee of one's rights—the worst the government can ever do to you is exile, and exile to a place that looks and feels a lot like home. Yes, Athens executed Socrates: but the philosopher could have saved himself by simply moving to Thebes. He refused for philosophical reasons. You wouldn't have that option in Persia or Egypt.

No matter what the official form of government, therefore, this made all Greek states, for the wealthier classes, democracies, and purer democracies than we have now. In fact, even better if there were a variety of forms of government on offer—if democracy did not work for you, you could personally opt for an oligarchy or a monarchy.

In effect, this was a free market in government. Each polis had to compete with the others for citizens.

This seems to have produced not just democracy and human rights, but the explosion of art, ideas, and science—of culture—that made Greece the foundation civilization for all of Europe, the Antipodes, and the Americas. It gave Greece a massive advantage in human development, which in turn allowed it to race ahead of all rival cultures, including in a military sense. This was put to the test and proven by Alexander the Great.

I would posit that this was because the brightest and most creative are among those most likely to be oppressed by government. They are most likely, like Socrates, to appear to be a challenge or a danger to the authorities, and so to be put down. Only a free market in government protects them from this, and leaves them able to do their best work undisturbed. For this reason, creative types seem very much inclined when able to live much of their lives in exile: Picassos, Hemingways, Joyces, Einsteins, Hesses, Hitchcocks, Teslas, Kubricks, and so on.

To test the hypothesis, we can perhaps look for situations similar to Ancient Greece elsewhere, and see if they seem to be associated with the same effects.

I have already mentioned the Arabian or Persian Gulf. Observe the booming city states of Dubai, Qatar, and Bahrain to see something similar. It's all because of oil, you argue? Consider this: Bahrain and Dubia have next to no oil. Iraq and Iran are swimming in it. So why are the boom cities not Tehran and Baghdad?

Answer: Dubai, Qatasr, and Bahrain are small city states competing with each other and their neghbours for the allegience of their citizens. Iraq and Iran are large nations.

Compare, again, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong—small city states; mostly sharing a culture. And still doing better than the mainland monolith.

Let us turn now, if we may, to other historical examples. Consider the Jews. Their wandering has been traditionally considered a hardship; but it can also be seen as their greatest good fortune. Jewish culture is international and not tied to any one land. Being traders, not farmers, Jews were the folks who could quickly pick up stakes and move if a government became oppressive. The visible result: almost everywhere they have lived, despite official restrictions and sometimes outright repression, the Jews have had greater wealth, greater learning, and greater personal accomplishment than the surrounding population. One might almost call them a light unto the nations.

Now consider the Renaissance. Long and various have been the arguments about what exactly triggered it. The most common idea is that it was caused by the fall of Constantinople, and the dispersion of Greek learning to the rest of Europe.

By itself, a non sequitor; if so, why did we not have the Renaissance in Constantinople?

What we do know is that it appeared first in Italy, at a time when it was broken up into small city states, and made its living primarily by sea trading. Sound familiar?

And we know that it spread next to the lowlands noth of Germany—again, small city states that made their living primarily by sea trading.

It later spread to larger nations—Spain, France, and England. But only after, and more or less immediately after, the colonization of the New World.

The New World had the same significance as small neighbouring city states, in terms of mobility rights. But in one sense, even more so. Because the New World colonies offered new land, mobility now extended to farmers as well as bourgeoisie. Serfdom, more or less immediately, was dead.

More broadly, the fact that it was broken down into relatively small independent jurisdictions with similar cultures probably gave Europe the vitality to race ahead of China and the Arab world over the past millenium, to the extent that these tiny, divided states rose to become the world's masters.

Even within modern Europe, isn't it interesting that the relatively small, and culturally almost identical, states of Scandinavia tend to do better economically, in terms of general human development, and in terms of order and good government, than the larger and more monolithic states to their South?

Imperial England, in its heyday, worked in about the same way, because those feeling constrained had the option to head off to the colonies for a freer life. British ascendancy within Europe was aided, quite likely, by a British tendency to allow colonies much more self-government than did, say, Spain or France. The Thirteen Colonies were run as separate entities; whereas France unified hers as “New France,” and Spain and Portugal always tried to do the same.

America's dynamism has been a continuation of this principle. It has been fed, on the one hand, by the existence of the frontier, of the eternal option of pulling up stakes and heading west to be free of local restrictions; and on the other by the federal system, devolving power as much as possible down to the state level. As a result, when racial segregation began to bite across the South, blacks had the option of jumping the next bus and heading for the Northeast. When high taxes and restrictions on the right to work began to bite in the Northeast, workers and merchants had the option of jumping the next bus South. This gives America a creativity and a resilience which has served it well.

Unfortunately, of all the established human rights, mobility rights are probably the most neglected and least understood. Moreover, unlike almost all the others, it has been in steady decline. Check the Magna Carta—citizens were allowed much more mobility back then. Restrictions on merchants crossing borders to trade were unheard of, and constitutionally prohibited except in times of war.

I am not talking so much about free and unrestricted immigration. That may or may not be valuable, but it is not really the same thing, because it involves a change of culture. This creates other issues. Real mobility rights exist when those of a given culture and ethnicity have a clear range of jurisdictions to choose from, while keeping their personal wealth and more or less the same culture they grew up in.

If the English-speaking world, for example, wants to preserve its present dominance, as well as its personal freedoms, it has a great opportunity. The best thing it could do is to open up completely unrestricted immigration between the English-speaking countries. There ought to be no fuss or paperwork for anyone wishing to move between England, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Anglophone islands of the Caribbean.

Internally, the US has been moving away from States' rights since the Civil War. This is a mistake especially combined with the loss of the frontier. The value of federations is in providing for mutual defense, and in ensuring mobility rights. Anything beyond this is probably harmful.

For other nations, contrary to popular opinion, their best hope of development and competition, Perheven military, is probably to subdivide into smaller units, rather than to unite. Instead of seeking reunification, China should be grateful for the independent existence of Taiwan, along with Singapore, Hong Kong, and Macau. They are probably the secret of its present success, such as it is.

And the Arab world should forget about unifying. The division into separate states is not a weakness. Although it has yet to produce an Arab or a Muslim Renaissance, it is also a very new circumstance. The Turkish Caliphate was shattered less than a century ago. The ferment of independent states pursuing different models is their best hope for the future.